My husband Leland LOVES chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. Warm, gooey yet crispy, chocolatey cookies. So, I figured I would make some as a treat. I made sure to buy oats and chocolate chips while I was shopping at the grocery store in the valley, 40 minutes drive from our cabin. I put them away in the pantry and thought that was that.
A few days later when the cabin guests had arrived and gotten settled I figured I had some time to bake. I went to the pantry to find the chocolate chips and oats, yet they were missing. I hadn’t seen my husband eat them, so I asked him if he had. He said no. I could tell he didn’t even know I’d bought them. I figured maybe I had misplaced them and would eventually figure out what I had done with them.
A few months went by and something in the cabin needed repair. So, Leland opened up the ceiling tiles in our hallway area. To our surprise sitting in the ceiling were the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies. A bag of chocolate chips and a half-eaten container of oats. A squirrel had gone into the pantry via the false ceiling and hoisted a 12oz container of chocolate chips and a 2 1/2 pound container of oats into the ceiling 15 feet away. This must have been quite the feat for such a small animal. It had even placed the false ceiling tile in the pantry almost perfectly back in place and proceeded to feast on chocolate and oats for months.